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Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience do the people you manage keep making?
21–25 of 25 posts
Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience do the people you manage keep making?
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is interesting. Can this be thought of as the flip side of matt_s' second point[0]: > Thinking that pure technical merit of an idea will magically sell it to me (manager) and above. This, being the flip side, can be formulated as: " Thinking that pure managerial merit of an idea will magically sell it to me (managéè)[1] and below/lateral ". I'm at my first job. Every time I'm asked to make a presentation I invar…
I use the phrase "that's an impedance mismatch" all the time. Software guy who has done some hardware stuff. I use it in the context of humans: "Sending $ENGINEER to do that job is an impedance mismatch, they'll screw it up". Stuff like that. Love that phrase, might be misusing it, still love it. On "is it the flip side of the same problem of an Engineer who complains management doesn't get it" I'm not seeing it. I m…
> Stuff like that. Love that phrase, might be misusing it, still love it.
Yeah, love those concepts that lend themselves well to other systems (signal to noise ratio, inertia, etc).
What I meant, I may have "packaged" my message clumsily, was the following: is an Engineer's duty, in the context of their job, to package "technical" information for the manager not the flip side of the manager's duty to package "managerial" information for the Engineer.
The Engineer complains that management doesn't get "obvious technical" information the same way management complains an Engineer doesn't get "obvious management" information, which might cause mutual disdain, and ~°we all know°~ it's easier to have disdain for people with questionable hygiene and appearance, so there's that.
I guess an Engineer's struggle with money stuff is really the same as the inability of someone to solve a Physics problem: one needs to have the data in the right dimensions, the laws that apply to them, and know how to apply them. Then practice doing so.
An Engineer's inability to "get money stuff" is one or more of the above missing (cash vs cash flow for figures of the right dimension, for example), knowing the rules to apply to money, and then the practice of applying them.
Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience do the people you manage keep making?
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use the phrase "that's an impedance mismatch" all the time. Software guy who has done some hardware stuff. I use it in the context of humans: "Sending $ENGINEER to do that job is an impedance mismatch, they'll screw it up". Stuff like that. Love that phrase, might be misusing it, still love it. On "is it the flip side of the same problem of an Engineer who complains management doesn't get it" I'm not seeing it. I m…
> Stuff like that. Love that phrase, might be misusing it, still love it. Yeah, love those concepts that lend themselves well to other systems (signal to noise ratio, inertia, etc). What I meant, I may have "packaged" my message clumsily, was the following: is an Engineer's duty, in the context of their job, to package "technical" information for the manager not the flip side of the manager's duty to package "manager…
I dunno. It seems more weird to me that the engineer, um, "engineer" as in good at math, good at seeing a whole system, doesn't apply those skills to their own compensation package.
It would be a whole lot less weird to me if we were talking about, I dunno, anyone who isn't good at systems/math.
It's just a big blind spot, at least it is in the USA. I don't get it.
Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience do the people you manage keep making?
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Stuff like that. Love that phrase, might be misusing it, still love it. Yeah, love those concepts that lend themselves well to other systems (signal to noise ratio, inertia, etc). What I meant, I may have "packaged" my message clumsily, was the following: is an Engineer's duty, in the context of their job, to package "technical" information for the manager not the flip side of the manager's duty to package "manager…
I dunno. It seems more weird to me that the engineer, um, "engineer" as in good at math, good at seeing a whole system, doesn't apply those skills to their own compensation package. It would be a whole lot less weird to me if we were talking about, I dunno, anyone who isn't good at systems/math. It's just a big blind spot, at least it is in the USA. I don't get it.
It should be the case.. Then again, there's the "conjunction fallacy"[0]. There's the case where the staggering majority of participants who were trained in probability got the test wrong.
Anyway, thanks for the input. Fascinating how we function.
Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience do the people you manage keep making?
#25The one that I've seen and mostly righted is them thinking that the direction of their career is my or the companies responsibilities. It's not, but I still drive them and advocate for them to grow on behalf of the company. I tell them that if they find themselves in a different environment, they might find a company or manager that cares about them and their growth. They must find ways to be self driven and drive th…
It's also their responsibility to leave for a better opportunity if they can't advance their career at their current job. It's the manager's responsibility to try to retain good talent.
Absolutely, but most managers and company care only about getting the current job at hand done even st the expense of nurturing and growing their employees